Hutchins Roundup: Quantitative easing, upskilling, and more

Studies in this week’s Hutchins Roundup find that only certain types of quantitative easing affect economic activity, the Great Recession accelerated the trend toward the use of higher-skilled workers, and more.

Using a new data set of electronic job postings in the U.S. for 2007 and 2010-2015, Brad Hershbein of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and Lisa Kahn of Yale find that areas that were hit hardest by the Great Recession saw the greatest increase in the skills required for advertised jobs. In particular, ads posted in hard-hit areas were about 16 percent more likely to contain education and experience requirements and about 10% more likely to include requirements for cognitive and computer skills. The authors show that this “upskilling” away from middle-skilled jobs and toward higher-skilled jobs occurred within occupations and appeared to be driven by firms substituting routine-task workers with machines or outsourced labor. They conclude that the Great Recession served to accelerate the long-standing secular trends that have led to the hollowing out of the U.S. labor market.

In 2013, Georgia Tech’s computer science department, which is regularly ranked in the top ten in the U.S., started an online M.S. in Computer Science program that costs less than one-sixth of the equivalent in-person program for out-of-state students. Joshua Goodman and Amanda Pallais of Harvard and Julia Melkers of Georgia Tech find that this online program substantially increases enrollment in formal education by expanding the pool of students—primarily mid-career Americans—rather than substituting for other educational options. They estimate that this single program will raise the number of Americans with master degrees in computer science by about 7% per year. More generally, they conclude that low-cost, high-quality online options may open opportunities for populations who would not otherwise pursue education.